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“WORLD

Can INF agreement

lead to more arms cuts?

By FRED WEIR
MOSCOW — Amid almost
deafening thunder rolling in from
World stock markets, U.S. Secre-
lary of State George Shultz came

his Soviet counterpart, Eduard
Shevardnadze, designed to “move
‘the ball along” on crucial disar-
Mament issues. He left having
Made “a little progress” and raising
4 lot of doubts about American
Willingness to follow through ona

Sures to eliminate the threat of glo-
al war in the nuclear age.
The global double-zero accord
°n medium-and-shorter-range
Nuclear missiles is “virtually nailed
down,” Shultz told reporters before
leaving Moscow. At week’s end
Shevardnadze was scheduled to
Pay a further visit to Washington,
Which may well finalize this agree-
Ment as well as set a date for the
long-awaited Reagan/Gorbachev
Summit.
What now apparently preoccu-
Ples the Soviet side is the American
“Attitude toward expanding and
accelerating the disarmament pro-
During their face-to-face
Meeting in Moscow, Soviet leader
Gorbachev repeatedly probed
Shultz on this point. He made spe-
Cific proposals: Would the United
States be willing to agree, begin-
Ning November 1, to a mutual
Moratorium on testing, producing
and deployment of all medium and
Short-range missiles? ‘‘The whole

World would then see that the
@reement already works, even

to Moscow last week for talks with .

Comprehensive package of mea-:

before it comes into law, thus
demonstrating the degree of mut-
ual consent on this issue,” said
Gorbachev.

moratorium on testing, produc-
tion and deployment of all me-
dium and short-range missiles?
‘*The whole world would then see
that the agreement already
works, even before it comes into
law, thus demonstrating the de-
gree of mutual consent on this is-
sue,’’ said Gorbachev.

At another point, Gorbachev
offerred to halt work on the con-
troversial Krasnoyarsk radar in-
stallation, if the U.S. would stop
construction of a similar facility in
Scotland.

The Soviets see INF as a step-
ping-stone to better things, Gor-
bachev stressed to Shultz. ““We
hope an agreement in this sphere
will usher in an even deeper and

more substantial process of elim-

inating the universal nuclear dan-
ger,’ he said.

In Moscow Shultz displayed no
sense of urgency about finding
ways to bring a speedy halt to the
depredations of a runaway arms
race. While lauding the pending
agreement on INF, and express-
ing verbal support for the goal ofa
50 per cent reduction in strategic
nuclear weapons, Shultz de-
fended NATO plans_ to
‘compensate’ for the ‘‘loss’’ of
its INF missiles by adding other
types of nuclear delivery systems,
tocircumvent the provisions ofthe

_treaty. He also argued in favor of.

a conventional arms buildup and
remained strangely silent on the
‘subject of chemical weapons.

Perhaps the most serious point, ©

Shultz reiterated the Reagan
administration’s determination to
press ahead with Star Wars, thus
extending the arms race — and
the military economy — into the
indefinite future.

Curiously, Shultz had some re-
trospective praise for last year’s
summit meeting in Reykjavik,
where Ronald Reagan first agreed
to and then backed away from a
comprehensive package of
disarmament measures. ‘“‘When
people come to look back on
Reykjavik,”’ said Shultz in Mos-
cow, ‘Iam sure they will see it as
the summit where more was
accomplished than at any other.”’

But Reykjavik affirmed the in-
ter-relatedness of all arms control
issues, and set out a logical,
progressive program for achiev-
ing reductions and setting up
further negotiations in all areas.
The American commitment to
this principle of seeking compre-
hensive solutions — a disarma-

ment ‘‘package’’ — remains very -

much in doubt. Specifically:

e Inthe spirit of Reykjavik, the
INF agreement should be seen as
just a first step leading to broader
and deeper cuts in all types of
weapons. Why, then, did U.S.
Defence Secretary Caspar Wein-
berger last week outline plans to
install more battlefield nuclear
weapons, more FB-111 and F-15

Moving the ball on INF along: U.S. Secretary of State Shultz being
greeted by Soviet Foreign Minister Shevardnadze in Moscow.

strike bombers, and more sea-
launched cruise missiles in the
European theatre, and to
“improve their ability to pene-
trate Warsaw Pact air defences’’?
If these plans are carried out the
U.S. will apparently have more
nuclear weapons in Europe than it
did before the INF pact was
worked out.

As the Soviet press has been
pointing out, making a mockery
of the first treaty hardly seems a
constructive way to begin
negotiations on the next.

e The next major disarmament
accord should entail drastic cuts
in strategic weapons, land-and-
sea-based intercontinental mis-
siles in the first place. But, as
Soviet leaders have repeatedly
pointed out, any success in reduc-
ing these systems must be sec-
urely founded upon an affirmation
by both sides of the terms of the
Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty.
Without a clear mutual obligation
not to launch a new arms race in

—

>

INTERNATIONAL FOCUS Tom Morris

It’s a matter
Ofdegrees...

_You wouldn't think it pos-
Sible to compare the brutal
Pinochet regime in Chile to a
‘Sang of greedy incompetents

ulroney calls his Tory
80vernment.
That crowd of right-wing

Ps, you might argue, were
elected, while Pinochet mur-
dered his predecessor to grab
Power. That's true.

Mulroney’s government is
laughable in its drive to self-
destruct, you might say, Pino-
Chet’s people operate a clini-
Cally efficient murder machine.
at’s also true.
But is this the entire story?

Pinochet's aim was to return

hile to the pockets of private
Owners, domestic and foreign
—and to break all resistance to
that aim.

Mulroney’s > goal, under
Canadian conditions, is not all
that different: privatize, re-
- Move all safeguards to foreign
“akeovers, open Canada wide
o U.S. penetration, weaken
4nd sell Crown corporations —
4nd to break resistance to that
Boal.

And while Pinochet has
abandoned any ‘‘democratic”’

pretences, Mulroney can’t do
that.

But let’s look still closer:

Watch as the ‘‘democratic”’
velvet glove slips and the
mailed fist begins to show.

In Chile last week (after 14
years of fascism!) they passed
a new law prohibiting anyone
or any group from having any

Pinochet’s police? No, these
are Mulroney’s boys in Ottawa
keeping their world safe for
capital.

association of any kind with
‘*Marxists.”’

One of the penalties for
violators: prohibition for five
years holding union office.

In Ottawa two weeks ago,
the Tories passed Bill C-86 or-
dering postal workers back to
work. The bill, which followed
-ever-escalating police violence
and massive Canada Post

- scab-herding, would suit Pino-

chet perfectly: C-86 also pro-
hibits violators (exercising
their legal right to strike) from
holding union office for five
years.

Labor Minister Cadieux, in
the uniform of a Chilean gen-
eral, differs not one bit from
the framers of Pinochet’s gag
law. And if he could, he would
unleash even more ‘‘law and
order” to stifle union opposi-
‘tion to ‘‘privatization’’ and
sell-out. :

There's nothing inherently
““democratic’’ about Canadian
capitalism or its political
watchdogs if their interests are
threatened.

Minuteman’s
safety system? -

Imagine if you were a Mus-
covite picking up your morning

paper and reading: ‘‘The U.S.
Air Force said that an ar-
moured car parked atop a Min-
uteman III silo ‘as-added pro-
tection’ after sensors inside the
silo gave off signals suggesting
that the nuclear weapon was
about to be launched nearly
four years ago...”

Then after you picked your-
self up, you read: ‘“The vehicle
“would have fallen on top of the
missile and prevented it from
going any place’ if a launch had
occurred,’” according to Cap-
tain Phillip Delaney, a Strate-
gic Air Command spokesman
when asked about the incident
at the rocket base on the Ne-
braska-Wyoming border on
Jan. 10, 1984. :

With growing amazement
you then read: ‘‘The theory, he
said, is that the cover is blown
aside so rapidly that a vehicle
parked on it ... would hang in
the air — like yanking a table-
cloth from under dishes —then
drop straight down to keep the
missile from going anywhere.
The procedure has never been
tested,’ he added.

Do we need more reasons
for disarmament?

space, they. say, it seems futile to
speak about meaningful
disarmament on earth:

e Chemical weapons are
another horrific product of the
modern age, with a potential for
mass slaughter rivalling that of
‘nuclear arms. The USSR has uni-
laterally ceased production of
chemical weapons, and has been
pressing hard for a total ban on
them. The Soviets are construct-
ing a special facility at
Chapayevsk designed to safety
destroy existing chemical shells
and bombs. Last month they went
so far as to openly display sam-
ples of Soviet chemical ordnance
to Western observers at Shik-
hany, and demonstrated project-
ed disposal techniques.

Washington’s reply to these
unprecedented overtures from
the Soviet side was a slap in the
face: In mid-October Reagan or-
dered that production. of
“binary’’ chemical weapons be
commenced, with a view to

. deploying them with U.S. forces

in Europe. :

As one baffied Soviet commen-
tator put it, ““‘Why on earth did
Reagan decide to stick the “binary
shell’ into George Shultz’s lug-
gage right on the eve of his visit to
Moscow?”

e Conventional arms are a
large and very expensive compo-
nent of the arms race, and the
USSR has put many detailed pro-
posals on the table for their reduc-
tion. Yet the talk within NATO —

_ and reiterated by Shultz — seems

to be rather in favour of ‘‘building
up”’ and ‘‘modernizing’’ conven-
tional forces to offset the
approaching menace of nuclear
disarmament.

_ @ Regional issues was another
field which Shultz and
Shevardnadze discussed in some
‘depth. But here too Washington
seems very much on the defen-
sive these days, with its largely
self-made debacle in the Persian
Gulf, and its less-than-successful
efforts to undermine fledgling
movements for national recon-
ciliation in Afghanistan, Kam-
puchea and Nicaragua. Only in
Angola do the forces of the
Reagan doctrine seem to be still
running rampant, backed by U.S.
weapons and the South African
army. With Shultz’s departure
from Moscow — ironically he ar-
rived and left in a dense fog, very
unusual weather conditions for
this city — the future course of
East-West relations seems dif-
ficult to picture. Perhaps, in the
final analysis, those crashing
stock markets will have more to
say about it than all of the dip-
lomats put together.

PACIFIC TRIBUNE, NOVEMBER 4, 1987 e 9

— a

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